Amid Published Reports About Problems with Voice Broadcast Campaign in Pinellas County, Florida, CallFire Issues Statement

An Associated Press story published today reported on problems
with an election-related voice broadcast campaign, conducted yesterday
and today, in Pinellas County, Florida. Dinesh Ravishanker, CEO of
CallFire (www.callfire.com),
the company that created the technology, issued the following statement:

“A user from the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections created a voice
broadcast campaign on Monday, Nov. 5, which appears to have been
intended to remind people of the deadline to turn in their absentee
ballots. The recorded message said ‘… you have until tomorrow at 7p.m….'
The user started the campaign at 4:30 p.m. on Monday and it ran until 8
p.m. At 8:30 a.m. today, Tuesday, Nov. 6, he restarted the same
campaign but without updating the recorded message. Accordingly, people
who received the message today, Tuesday, heard: ‘…you have until
tomorrow at 7 p.m.,' which implies Wednesday.

“To be absolutely clear: there was no technical glitch with the CallFire
system. There was no ‘queue.' The user in question manually started and
stopped the campaign on both days. It is the user's responsibility to
manage all recorded messages.”